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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Indie Ink Runs Deep: Giano Cromley

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....Today's ink comes from Giano Cromley. Gianowas born in Billings, Montana. The Last Good Halloweenis his first novel. His writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Literal Latte, and The Bygone Bureau, among others. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. He teaches English at Kennedy-King College and lives on Chicago's South Side with his wife and two dogs.

Writing sucks.

Hold on, let me clarify.

Writing is great. Everything that happens after you write is what well and truly
sucks.

Any writer who’s been doing it for even the briefest of
spells will tell you that rejection is their most constant companion. It is the
dark-hooded specter that lurks over their shoulder on every trip to the
mailbox, during each tremulous click of the email refresh button.

In the nearly twenty years I’ve been trying to get
published, I’ve been rejected in every way imaginable. I’ve gotten nice
rejections, hopeful rejections, curt rejections, mean rejections, and flat-out
confusing rejections. I’ve been passive-aggressively rejected by simply getting
no rejection at all.

I’ve also had some successes. Just enough to keep
whatever flame of hope there is alight.

The funny thing I've realized is that rejection and
acceptance aren’t so different from each other. At the end of the day, yea or
nay, a writer must always go back to the blank page, stare down the emptiness,
and summon the audacity to dare to fill that space with words.

About halfway through the manuscript for The Last Good Halloween, I told myself I
was going to get a tattoo if I ever managed to find a publisher. It was one of
those silly self-promises that grew in significance. As time wore on, it became
its own finish line, a reason to forge ahead. While I finalized the manuscript
and began the tortuous process of seeking publication, I pondered this
theoretical tattoo. Whatever I was going to get, it had to be good, it had to
be perfect.

Over the years, the Greek mythological figure, Sisyphus,
has come to take on an outsized importance in my life. When I tell people that
Sisyphus was the guy whose punishment from the gods was to roll a boulder up
the hill, only to have it roll back down when his task was completed, they
cringe. They cringe because they imagine some sweaty guy toiling endlessly,
skinning his elbows, straining at the sinews, sweating blood. But that’s not
how I think of Sisyphus. I see what Albert Camus, in his famous essay, saw –
someone who was unafraid to hold his middle finger up to the gods, someone who
walked back down the hill, bravely put his shoulder to the rock, and got back
to work. After all, what was the purpose of the gods’ punishment if not to
break Sisyphus? And what was the one way he could thwart them?

That's exactly what writing is. It’s starting over, no
matter what, every day, because keeping going is the one thing that’s actually
within your power. Sisyphus should be every writers’ superhero. How could I not
get him inked on me? If only I could get my manuscript published, because that
was the original promise I’d made.

A little less than a year ago that promise wasn’t looking
too good. After being burnt by agents and pigeon-holed by editors, it was
starting to look like there was no hope for my little manuscript. I began to
question the entire premise of my vow. Why did I say I’d get the tattoo after I published my book? Wouldn’t I
need to internalize the lesson of Sisyphus even more if I didn’t publish it? And who the hell cares about such chronological
semantics when the only one you're arguing with is yourself?

Last March I decided to do it. I scoured the internet
until I found a stylized depiction of Sisyphus by Marcell Jankovics. I printed
it out and took it to Old Town Tatu in Chicago.

A few weeks after it healed, I heard from an editor at
Tortoise Books. Not a rejection. This time, an acceptance. And the next day, in
true Sisyphean fashion, it was back to work again. The image is etched on the
inside of my left forearm, in plain view every time I hold a pen poised over a
blank sheet of paper – the moment when all writers are most in need of a
superhero.

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Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.